


Millennia

by HaephestusCrex



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Dorks in Love, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gaming, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Mild obsessive behaviour, Multi, Online Dating, Online Friendship, Online Relationship, Online Romance, Other, Past Lives, Past Torture, Phone Sex, Post-Dark Side Of Dimensions, Romance, Sex, Sex Toys, Slice of Life, Strangers to Lovers, Substance Abuse, Virtual Reality, bad summary just plz read, because Ancient Magus is SUch a big undertaking, big lewds incoming, casually updating between Ancient Magus and Capgras, dark shit you associate with yami bakura, less slowbuild more smut, no betas we die like men, shut-in typical but not ridiculously over the top stalker shit, this is my break fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:27:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23523052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaephestusCrex/pseuds/HaephestusCrex
Summary: In which you are a very, very, very KaibaCorp product obsessed little gamer - but not the stereotypical shut-in, and get a new online friend once your regular Guildmaster and co. begin to grate on your nerves.It all started with a chance encounter, when you took pity on a poor n00b who'd managed to get glitched into a wall in one of your favourite MMORPGs, and decide to take mercy on the little mage.Ryou Bakura makes a new friendly acquaintance out of you, just as you receive a virtual reality helmet from KaibaCorp and access to their titular release title."I want to play with you too," - was where it all began....
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Reader, Reader/Other(s)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 25





	1. Prologue - Lets Play

**Author's Note:**

> {{{ So, we never got to see Ryou Bakura in a virtual world environment did we? I cant recall that we did for Legendary Heroes arc, but we didn't for Noah's Virtual World, and ain't that just a cryin' shame? Time to change that. Plus, with it being a virtual world I get to essentially make up, I can throw in magical girls, ridiculous shonen fights, and generally have fun, but most importantly... e-lewds. Dirty messaging. flirting. fun. Honestly plan to just sit back and chill with this. No grand overarching plot, just a ship and some trash, slice o' life delight. PLEASE review, my job is being super shitty to me right now & with quarantine in the UK I'm really just dying. This is pretty much the only good outlet I've got so any input or engagement really helps. Anyway, there goes my e-beg. Short chapter, like, unnaturally short for me, but it almost feels like a prologue, sort of. Idk. Next chapter will probably be my usual 7k words. Enjoy.}}

_Prologue_

**{Lets Play!}**

The bane of every gamer is a glitch that leaves you stuck - clipping into the environment itself and not being able to move your character is one of the most vexing. Usually, reloading a save will do the trick, the problem is, however, when such a glitch manages to occur in an open world MMORPG, and that isn’t an option.

With annoyance, Ryou could see flurries of characters darting past him into the PVP - player verses player, wider world and he however, is stuck. He could quit out to the game load screen, but he’ll lose out on his timed quest, and the prizes randomise each time for this particular one. He’s also not keen on having to play through the tutorial - he knows he has to get to a certain point before he is finally out off this beginner stage. He clicked around frantically, firing off a few spells into the stone wall texture he’s trapped in, but it does no good.

He groaned, about to click out into the title screen, until a female avatar runs over to his character, stopping dead in front of him. His character is clad in grey, with simple armour and a yellow mask over his features, along with a long, ornate staff which signified his mage class. Above his head, is a simple small print screen name: Wizard_of_Change - and hovering over him with a cursor shows his meagre level one status if his gear doesn’t give it away.

He almost leaves the game, until he hears a ping and sees a new chat window overlay over the open world’s general area chat. He takes pause - and realises it’s the person whose in front of him, whose standing so still that the idling animation begins to play of her twirling her long equipped knife.

_DirectMsg: Babylon12: Hey newbie. You stuck?_

The female avatar isn’t wearing any gear Ryou is used to seeing, it’s a dark, detailed elegant purple and silver armour that glitters and has an ethereal wisp spinning around her hips. The look is completed with a black veil mask and hood, he hovered over her with his cursor and blinked in surprise.

****LVL 120/130** **

She was ten levels from being at the peak of the game, why was she in the level one area, which has no PVP? He decides to reply, though is resigned to his in-game fate, he’s too curious to ignore the chat window.

_DirectMsg: Wizard_of_Change: Yeah I’m gonna have to quit to title. Ugh._

Almost immediately, he gets a response.

_DirectMsg: Babylon12: Maybe not. Accept my request?_

**Bablyon12 has sent a Party Invite.**

Ryou Bakura was bemused, what would a titan of a player want with him, and what would being in their party do? Still, with not much to lose, he decides to click accept, which now enables a few features he didn’t think of outside of Party Chat, which only has them both in anyway.

He watches as the female avatar began going through a charging spell animation, before firing at him. He isn’t worried - this isn’t a PVP zone, but he is confused, until he realises, buffs, healing spells and other ‘friendly’ class magic is now enabled as they’re a party.

The white-clad mage is forcibly teleported to a new spot that the rogue female avatar marks on the ground, and surprisingly, it works - pulling him out of the wall.

****Party Chat** **

_Wizard_of_Change: That worked! Thank you!_

_Babylon12: dw about it. First account?_

_Wizard_of_Change: yea..that obvious huh? Sorry I’ve got a timed quest…_

Ryou Bakura is pretty pleased he can continue his timed quest, and is about to head away but feels incredibly rude doing so after just being helped, but the other player seems pretty cool.

_Babylon12: Go go! We’re in Party so can still talk._

_Babylon12: Wow pure mage class for first build? Ambitious. Ur gonna need all the help you can get._

**__ **

**_**Babylon12 wants to initiate trade mode, will you accept?** _ **

Ryou is confused, he doesn’t have anything in his inventory besides non-tradeable quest items and says as much, but accepts. Very quickly, he sees his inventory slots getting filled, and is hovering his cursor over the items in shock and some excitement. It isn’t often that there are altruistic MMO players, unless you’re already in a guild or playing with friends, so in a way, he’s hit the jackpot. It isn’t an impressive amount of treasure that he’s given in the free trade, honestly, it’s just a large cluster of health restoration and mana potions along with a rather ugly little donkey mount - though he’s surprised to receive a pet at all, and grateful.

_Wizard_of_Change: Oh my! Thank you! Seriously. Why are you being so nice?_

_Wizard_of _Change: I don’t want to sound ungrateful, just shocked._

_Babylon12: We were all n00bs once, y’know? Anyways, got my own story quest here, not here to wail on fresh meat. Gotta go. Don’t get ganked!_

Babylon12 however, didn’t disband the party, and simply leaves the area completely, heading on their own quest, leaving Ryou with a small, but very much welcomed bounty. Even the ugly donkey gave him much needed speed to dart through PVP zones and avoid a few more attacks before he was ready.

Every so often, whenever he logs in, it shows up when Babylon12 is online, and they occasionally message, but not daily. Usually to initiate trade and dump duplicates of high value items they’ve managed to obtain on higher level missions. It seemed only natural to add them as a friend on the game - since they seemed to play at odd hours. Yugi didn’t play Battle of Eternals as much as Ryou, being preoccupied with his partnership with KaibaCorp and all, but between working at his father’s museum and mulling over going to university a bit later, he didn't have much to do but game. That, and he didn’t feel ready to take the entrance exams, nor was he sure of what to study if he went.

It was getting a little bit more acceptable to take a while to decide, as long as you were studying up for the entry exams, or gaining some sort of valuable work experience, so, all in all, Ryou Bakura doesn’t have terribly much to do. Yugi Mutou is a busy guy, even if he is a regular caller when it comes to his friends, most of them have gone directly to work, like Honda, Jonouchi and Ryuji. Anzu had boarded a plane for the United States, having received a dance scholarship at a performing arts school in New York, and so it began to feel like everyone was just getting busy….

But Ryou Bakura was staying the same.

It felt natural to add his regular chat and assisting partner to TeamTalk - the go-to desktop application for people, mostly gamers and streamers, to chat with each other, but was quickly overtaking most instant messaging programs with how streamlined it is. Disappointingly, he doesn’t have many people on there, to be honest, and he can see it’s been a while since everyone’s logged in together.

At least Babylon12 was around often. They usually just messaged each other game related progress, news about patches or upcoming releases of things the other might like - nothing too intense, but he always felt his mood lift when the symbol by their name would turn green, and signify “Online,”.

And then one day, Babylon12 did something different.

****

****!Ping #Babylon12 joined Voice-Chat-Channel** **

This jarred Ryou - to be honest, he never really wondered what they would sound like. They exchanged a few pleasantries here and there, like what they were having for dinner, what their sleep schedules were like, when the other didn’t feel like hopping onto Battle of Eternals for whatever reason. They were friendly, and even exchanged a few memes, but didn’t really veer into deep conversation.

With some measure of apprehension, he adjusts the volume on his headset and makes sure his microphone is on mute.

_‘What is going on….?’_ he thought, curiosity peaked.

* * *

“Hey! I was about to ping atcha to just hop in VC for a sec. So um, weird to be speaking like this just randomly but I’m too excited! Guess what came in my mail today Wiz! Seriously! Guess guess guess!” - you blurt down the microphone. Your voice has a boisterous and bubbly kind of energy, but you’re conscious of the volume level and watch to make sure the sound bars don’t flare into the red. The last thing you wanted to do was deafen the guy - you’re no stranger to voice chat, and know what to watch for. 

Wizard_of_Change seemed like a nice enough player, probably a guy - but quite chilled out, generally supportive and didn’t take criticism poorly unlike your ass of a Guildmaster, Yu Jung-Hwa - or, Doom_Tank - who was becoming less and less fun to play with each raid. You were generally slow to reach out to other players too, because they usually had their own guilds or cliques, or acted strangely the moment you went on the microphone and they realised you were a girl - not often, but sometimes. Taking a chance on a level one had turned out to work out in your favour, and so far he hadn't reacted to your voice at all, which was a good sign, because you were sick of painstakingly omitting hints about your gender in conversation.

You’d taken to calling your new friend “Wiz” for short, and you were “Babylon,” or just “Babs,” - but besides that and idle chatter about what was for dinner, besides games, the pair of you weren’t too personal, so you were worried going on voice chat might have thrown him off.

“You can type in the text channel, you don’t have to come on mic - I’m just - I’m too excited to hold it in right now, and I need both hands to tear this open and set it up,” you bubbled down the mic, tearing at the package in your hands.

Ryou didn’t know why he as shocked, or surprised, that you were a girl. Your female avatars should have been a give away, but most of the time, it was just guys who wanted to enjoy their skimpy armour skins. He is notoriously awful with women, and despite being incredibly popular for his good looks at school, and being semi-regularly bombarded with unwanted bento and female attention, he doesn’t know how to process it. Most of the time, he avoids it like the plague, but, with it just being over the internet - it doesn’t feel quite so cumbersome and the levels of awkwardness can at least be tempered. He can go away from the keyboard whenever he likes, and, neither of you had display pictures that showed who you were, so it didn’t matter what he looked like, or you. His photo was of one of his cuter, undead monsters out of his Duel Monsters deck - _Zombowwow._ It’s an undead, unfortunate little puppy with large uneven eyes and a voodoo-esque stitched little body. Your photo was the concept art for your favourite weapon in Battle of Eternals, the Blade of Sorrow, nothing to say what either of your genders were. You were a fucking good gamer, and that’s what Ryou respected, regardless of if you were a woman.

Ryou thinks about typing in the text channel, but hesitantly unmutes his microphone instead, comforted by the sounds of you enthusiastically unwrapping something to fill the dead air and prevent the awkwardness.

“Um, hey,” he started off awkwardly, before clearing his throat. “-What…what came for you?” what was so exciting it couldn’t be a text discussion.

You actually squealed a little, but not in a way that hurt his ears, it was more like a little squeak that caused the edges of his lips to twitch a little in amusement.

“The KCV! The KaibaCorp Vision! Beta test kits are getting sent this week, I finally got mine! I’ve been reading about it all week!” you gushed.

Ah yeah, one thing Ryou Bakura learned about you was that you were a KaibaCorp _fangirl._ Well, a technology fangirl. You were thankfully not one of the masses of women that fawned over Seto Kaiba, cooing over how he’s Japan’s Most Eligible Bachelor according to whatever rag of the week ran a story on him. You were a loyalist to the company, and brought every bit of new KaibaCorp technology that came out on the market, you followed technology influencers on BroadcastMe talking about their insider information. You subscribed to mailing lists, watched the press coverage, signed up for beta testing, and religiously debated on the specs of upcoming devices in more active TeamTalk groups.

Yeah, you were _that person._ But every bit of technology KaibaCorp had put out was pure quality and dwarfed most things on the market, and to you, had earned your loyalty. You brought Legendary Heroes and Virtual World 2 and played it in a fully operational VR pod that had you saving up for two years and working extra shifts to afford. You were a loyalist, and one of the few who regularly submitted issues and detailed error reports to the debugging team, and someone, somewhere picked up on it, because the bog-standard template email and letter KaibaCorp usually sent regarding beta testing was just a little bit different.

“It came with a letter too,” you add, thinking that Wiz is pretty shy just from how low his voice is. He seems to be a bit awkward, but most gamers on some level are, and you did just barrel into voice chat with no warning, and so, you decide to just keep talking - unable to contain your glee.

_“Thank you for all of your steadfast support, Babylon12, in recognition of this, we at KaibaCorp are pleased to present you with the Beta kit for the KC Vision, and our titular release title, Millennia. Please take a close look at the documentation accompanying this…_ blah blah blah. Standard NDA stuff, I mean, I’ve beta tested for some app developers before, not something this big but I’m guessing the legalese is a bit the same,” you said, stretching back in your rather costly, but well-loved computer chair which creaks a little as you bend backwards in your small bedroom.

“That’s a bit different to my letter, it’s not um, personalised, it just says ‘Dear Beta Tester’,” Ryou says hesitantly. He’s had a KC Vision for a while - the developer kit version actually - perks of being friends with Yugi Mutou, but he hadn’t set it up yet, because he didn’t actually have access to ‘Millennia’ or any software for it, so he didn’t see a need to set it up. Though, apparently Millennia launched for beta testing, so he could probably get himself a code for the game through his connections. “But I have a developer kit version of it and I don’t think I have an invite code for Millennia,” he says quietly.

“Shut up! You have a dev kit? Are you a dev Wiz?” you blurt out, honestly, whilst very into games, he didn’t seem terribly techy to you, and you would be correct.

“Um, no. I just… have some friends close to KaibaCorp,” he isn’t sure how to phrase it, to be honest, he doesn’t want to casually drop in that he’s friends with the King of Games, or that he was one of the few Battle City finalists. He enjoys this level of anonymity, and doesn’t want to be treated differently.

You whistle appreciatively down the microphone, how long did Wizard_of_Change keep this under his hat, all through your fangirling over new KaibaCorp products?

“Shiiit, Wiz. You’re a dark horse!” you’re not betrayed, though - you don’t feel close enough to feel stung, you just laugh it off. It’s just another thing that makes talking to Wiz, fun. “You’ve been holding out on me,” you joke.

“Better not hold out on that friend-code! I’m gonna hook up my gear. Use your fancy KaibaCorp connections and get an e-vite for Millennia dude! I want to play with you!” you gush “-and add me! I gotta set up and sync my KC Watch and--” you blathered, and Ryou Bakura just soaked it in, muting himself briefly.

Ryou feels his face heat up a little at your words, his palms just a little bit clammy, causing him to wipe them on his jeans. It’s been a while since anybody has been excited to spend time with him without expecting anything in return, unlike the girls back in Domino High.

_‘I want to play with you!’_

He pulls out his phone from his desk drawer, those words swirling in his head, and texts Yugi Mutou - using his connections didn’t seem like a horrible idea.

Ryou briefly unmutes, when you take a pause just to breath between your stream of excitable chatter.

“I want to play with you too.”


	2. LVL 1 - Spellwicks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which you and Ryou Bakura finally spawn into VR, and spend some time adjusting.
> 
> Ryou's nervous, you're excited, and both of you hunt for a quest.

Chapter One

_Level One_

**{Spellwicks}**

-

It took a very short amount of time for Ryou to receive an access invite to what he thought was a closed beta. In fact, he was given it with very few questions asked, except for a request to make sure he adds Yugi’s friend-code once he sets up the KCV. Apparently he has access to Millennia too, but he’s too busy focusing on his own project to play it much. He promises to login over the weekend and play with him for a bit, though. Admittedly, Ryou needed some help setting up the helmet, but now that he was a little bit more comfortable with you being on microphone - you could at least talk him through some of the setup. He didn’t think he’d have an ethernet cable sticking out of the back of his head, but, thankfully his router is decently close.

It was a day or two later before the pair of you scheduled a full first gaming session, because you both needed to do some more setting up and install a bunch of patches and software updates before you could both jump in.

To be honest, Ryou is a little nervous, he knows from what he’s heard from his friends that virtual reality has long since surpassed the uncanny valley territory and both looks, and feels, accurate to real life. Before he even sees anything, he has to scroll through a very long set of terms and conditions and flicks it past his eyes with his right hand, before his vision forcibly goes black, and the game begins to render into his vision.

A cool sensation washes over his body, feeling a little limp in his legs, before a surge of energy jolts through all of his muscles. It’s strangely pleasant, but it is very obvious that he’s being rendered and acclimated to the cyber environment, and his senses are being given a moment to adjust so as not to overwhelm and disorient him.

It’s still shocking however, when he loads into what looks like a very small, box-like changing room with a full body mirror so that he can observe the virtual render of his body. It feels accurate to his height, strangely enough. His movements are crisp and fast, and his facial details are very, very accurate, although his body seems to be a little on the generic side. There’s an absence of any real detailing on his body model beyond the rough lithe form he has in the waking world.

_‘So….character creation, I suppose?’_ he glances down at his left wrist, because there’s something strapped to it that he can see in the mirror. Pulling it under his face, he can see it’s a rather generic looking smartwatch, but touching it appears to give him options. Several boxes of holographic text emanate from the watch and hover over his arm, near his face, with an apparent “click it with your virtual finger to initiate” setup, with a plethora of options to choose from.

_\- INVENTORY_

_\- AVATAR_

_\- TRADE_

_\- MANAGE PARTY_

_\- ABILITIES & WEAPONS_

_\- [LOCKED]_

_\- BUG REPORT_

_\- SETTINGS_

_\- SAVE & QUIT_

It’s only when a disembodied, robotic sounding voice speaks over what sounds like an intercom, that Ryou literally jumps, and is jolted into action, as it instructs him on how to customise himself. Thank God there was nobody around to see that, or hear that surprised squawk that left his throat. Cringing, he hopes that you’re not doing as badly at he is right now….

It actually took the pair of you an hour or so to successfully create a character, pick a race, and get to grips with the controls. You had both selected to start off near each other though, since having friend-codes allowed you to start with a party, which was definitely a nice touch when an MMORPG that was planned to be released globally would get bogged down with players and it’d be easy to get overwhelmed at the start - and it should not be difficult or purposefully awkward to try and play with your friends, so the KCV went out of its way to at least try and make that easier.

Stepping out of the room, he can see that it’s in some sort of log cabin or inn. It reminds him of some of the flat, 2D RPGs he’s played, where you start off in a relatively soft, PvE environment. There isn’t much in the room to examine, just a bed with nothing under it, an empty dresser, and another mirror. So, with some trepidation, he opens the door and sees it leads to what feels like an eternal corridor of spawning rooms. It did seem to be some sort of eternal inn for the washed up newbie, but with only a beta tester group, it doesn’t seem terribly large. Still, he doesn’t want to venture down that corridor, and from the invisible friction wall, it seems the game doesn’t either. This leads him down to a noisy open bar, filled with a few poorly clothed beta testers, and what appeared to be NPCs engaging in idle conversation, sipping from tankards of ale that didn’t appear to run out.

It occurs to him now that, he isn’t sure what you look like, and is very thankful that he has your friend-code, because he can see your username, “Bablyon12” in the throngs of NPCs and people, trying to push through closer to him.

It’s only when he hears you whispering directly into his left ear, and he jolts, that he realises you have an ability to whisper to him when you’re further away because you’re both in a Party, and it’s thankfully much louder than the ambient noise around him.

“Meet me outside! This place is spawn hell,” - he sees your overhead name heading towards an exit, and begins pushing his way through, surprised when he can feel like he’s honestly pushing through a mass of people who have actual weight. In truth, virtual or not, Ryou Bakura doesn’t fare well with crowds, so he’s relieved to get out and be under the bright light of the virtual day. His eyes take another moment to adjust to the new environment, because it’s very light compared to the murky, earthy atmosphere of the inn he’d just escaped.

He let out a slow sigh of relief, and looks up and around him. There are trees as far as the eye can see, some low, some impossibly tall that he cannot see the end, and the sun bleats through in long golden rays weaving through fallen autumn leaves. He can see the soft swim of light particles and dust motes in the air, and long, thick branches that sprawl out like low, wooden arms with strange curvatures to them all over the shorter trees.

Looking behind him, the building he had spawned in looked like a giant, perfectly smoothed, wooden acorn that had been planted down on the ground, with an oval door and only small slits for windows. Between the arms of the many trees of the apparent forest he is surrounded by, are balls of wispy blue light that pulse with a sense of serenity and magic.

He’s not the only person gawking, but everyone has stood some distance apart at least, once they stumble out of the spawn point. Honestly, he could picture himself just sitting here, enjoying the beauty of the fictitious environment without necessarily having to do anything. It was now that Ryou understood why there were time caps on the helmets to encourage breaks between long sessions. At first he thought it was counter intuitive for KaibaCorp, but now, he understands the necessity. He could easily see how some people might get too comfortable here. It is, after all, beautiful - and idyllic.

“Hey, you went Elfish-Mage?” Ryou turned to the source of your voice, and just nods. He turns to take in your appearance, just as you are doing to him.

Both of you opted for different variations of a mask, because it seemed more comfortable. Somehow, this didn’t feel like it should be how either of you met for the first time, or maybe Battle of Eternals set a precedent. Either way, Ryou is in a full facial mask that is an elegant white, Venetian fully covering mask with elegant runic patterns all over it, that match his neatly cut, long white hair. His ears, however, protrude in typically elfish fashion, and he’s wearing a long, almost monk-like robe that isn’t terribly flattering, armed with a long, spindly mage staff that looks more like one of the tree branches.

“Yeah, I-I did, I just thought - I mean, I like playing these kinds of characters. I’m a healer class, but some of the support buffs are really good,” he offered.

“Shit, Wiz. You love playing hard, huh?” you snort. You’re dressed in a long, floor-length dark red cloak that reminds him of Little Red Riding Hood, complete with a hood that you tucked your long hair into, and have a soft, black cloth, mouth-guard that hides the lower portion of your face, save for your eyes. Your ears are even pointed like his, but are substantially shorter.

Ryou wondered briefly, if that was what you really looked like, but didn’t want to make it awkward. In truth, he can see very little of you, though your eyes do seem to be rendered rather nicely, if nothing else. Under that, he can see what looks like a short, black, metallic, body-form feminine armoured romper which cut off quite high up your thighs. He doesn’t want to be caught staring too long, but he sees thigh-high red tights held up by black garter and what looked like a pair of little crimson Dorothy heeled shoes that made you look like you should probably be in a fairytale, not a combat game.

“Mages are slow to level, but always worth it,” said Ryou insistently “-besides, I love magic,” and that, you had in common, though you didn’t race to voice it.

“You should try spellsword builds sometimes,” you said “-you won’t level your magic quite as high, or diversify it as much, but you get a good balance of being able to defend yourself physically without using as much mana,”.

“ I’m not sure if spellsword is really achievable with the classes so far,” Ryou said “-and I was in the character creator for so long I eventually just wanted to pick something I knew I’d like and just play,” he admitted, a little sheepish at how petulant that sounded, but even though he wasn’t squealing with excitement like you were, he was just as excited to play. “What are you playing as?” he asked, when he realises he’s been staring a little too long in trying to figure it out.

“Eh, I’m supposed to be a Fairy-Rogue - I wanted some of the fae abilities but I didn’t want to invest in a magic class just for one or two things. It’s a bit of a waste of free extra mana since rogues don’t have as many spells, but the passives are worth it,” that might explain the outfit, and it’s now you lift some of your clothes and reveal a small pair of rather spritely translucent wings that flutter with the beat of a hummingbird when Ryou peers at them.

He wonders, briefly, if you can fly - and you can, but don’t want to try it. Anything more than a hover makes you a bit dizzy at level one, and so, the pair of you just stare at each other for a moment.

“That’s fine, you’ve got me for spells,” Ryou said, with a small unseen smile behind his mask. The pair of you fall silent a moment, seeing somebody crash into a low branch from attempting to fly - another fairy type, whose looking sheepishly from the floor. It seemed flying wasn’t fully streamlined, but they were alright, at least. “But um, what now? Was there somebody in the inn we were supposed to talk to?”.

You shook your head, and looked down at the floor, kicking your heels a bit, and noticing a distinct lack of sound when you did. Hm. That’ll be the stealth buff.

“Word in the inn was they’re still working on the opening cutscene problems, I’m not sure how this cleared alpha testing,” you said “-but regardless they didn’t want this to be a hand-holding story campaign, there’s a lot of freeform to this apparently. So...if we want the story, we have to find it. So, maybe we follow the dirt path? There’s only one,” you point with your finger, kicking a bit of soil in that direction and marvelling at the level of detail.

“Right, that sounds good,” Ryou said, feeling a bit out of sorts. In truth, he’d been building up this moment in his head to be a bit more grandiose than it was. He’d never even seen a photo of you, or you of him, and now you were in virtual reality together. It should just feel like playing any other game - or like Battle of Eternals, but the level of detailing made this a lot more real than Ryou was initially prepared for.

“First step in an RPG is to find a merchant and a town, right? I mean, I don’t even think we start with any currency,” Ryou said thoughtfully “-but that should be a priority. Then we can see about getting some basics,”.

“Solid plan,” you said, nodding “-I’ve never started an RPG completely empty though, usually a beginner pack or a tutorial bonus or something,” - but, this game did stress that it was meant to be ‘open world’ with optional story campaigns and quests, but surely a tutorial was in order? Maybe you were just used to being spoilt by games, though.

“I know what you mean. When I’m a game master for tabletop stuff, I usually let people start out with a few things in their inventory, but the inventory is locked,” Ryou said, pulling it up from the in-game watch.

Well, shit.

“Yeah, there’s quite a few locked things,” you said with a frown “-they either need to be patched in, or we need to level up,” - the pair of you walk through the forest, with a handful of other testers in the distance and behind you. There’s only a small throng of trees before they begin to part in favour of a large clearing, which was filled with a cluster of similarly acorn-shaped buildings. There is quite a woodland theme going on, and between that and the level one gear for female rogues, you half expected a big bad wolf to emerge from the aether.

“That big place!” Ryou said suddenly, pointing to the largest building at the edge of the cluster. It looked a little bit less like an acorn and more like just a circular building with a heavily sloping roof. “It looks like a business,” which, compared to the others, which looked much smaller, almost like homes, was probably an accurate guess.

“Hopefully we can score a map,” you said “-if we can find some local NPCs or something, that’d be a good start, otherwise, we should circle back and start asking the randoms at the spawn point. I know I saw a few drinking in there,” you grimaced though, remembering the cluster of new beta testers swarming them “-but it was a bit difficult to get to them,”.

He agrees, and the pair of you walk in a strangely comfortable silence. The pair of you are soaking in the rich scenery, occasionally touching the differently textured things around you - mostly that was you, as Ryou seemed to be able to hold in his impulsive urges better. He was even patient when you were briefly distracted by a “Chameleon Butterfly” which changed colours mid flight, that you ended up following - trying to touch it with your fingers to sate your curiosity.

“I wanted to capture it and see if I can make a potion!” you whined, before faltering. “I know there’s an alchemy tree in the skills menu, I just didn’t realise how dark crushing a cute butterfly is in virtual reality though. I probably should have thought that through,” - you had the decency to look a bit embarrassed, when the butterfly finally got away by shooting high into the trees.

“Oh, I didn’t think of that either,” said Ryou, less bemused now that you’d explained your sudden bug chase “-but we should probably keep our priorities straight. Map, money, and then exploring,” - his tone was gentle, but firm. He is surprised with how natural it feels to talk with you like this, maybe because you’re both just in a game, and equally lost, but he’s finding he’s speaking a whole lot more than when he’s with the entirety of his friend group.

“Looks like I was right,” he said suddenly, once the large building he’d pointed at earlier was now in clearer view. The other, smaller buildings appeared to be residential homes, and there was even a set of little market stall stands that looked like they hadn’t opened for business yet. It seemed the AIs probably had their own schedule and clock, which only served to make the world feel more real. Maybe they were asleep? It felt like it was very early in-game time, and checking on the menu-watch confirmed this.

“Ah, damn, the sign is in runes, but I think this is like a town hall?” he pointed at the little symbol of pillars engraved into the runic sign that hung over the door. It looked a little like a classical Greek building, it could even just be a fancy public library for all you two knew, but it was more than likely a public building. Emboldened by that, you both push the large wooden doors and are surprised to feel a real weight push back, but then open, and give way to a small little office.

It’s filled with wooden furnishings, a card stack to the left of the room filled with pamphlets. The front of the large, vacant office is a desk that spans from one end of the room to the other, with a foldable counter-top to let people in and out from behind the desk space.

“Hello, and welcome home, little casters!” a very warm, older female voice speaks. A small, stout woman comes out from behind a stack of books that are piled high behind the desk. She’s got dark, grey hair and has a pair of reading glasses sloping down her nose.

The pair of you glance at one another, before deciding to step forward.

“We’re home?” Ryou asked, and the woman just smiles in response, before nodding.

“Of course you are! You have magic written all over you - and with a little fairy friend no less!” ah, it seemed this NPC could at least detect what class and race they were, and though you’re a rogue, she seems content enough that you’re capable of any magic at all.

“Welcome to our sleepy little village, we only ever get your sorts here at Spellwicks, but it’s always a pleasant surprise,” she said warmly. “-What’re your names, little ones?” she lifts up the counter and leaves the desk area, and begins walking towards the leaflet rack.

You save Ryou the awkwardness of having to deliberate on if the pair of you were going to use your real names in VR and disclose them, and simply drop the number from your username.

“I’m Babylon,” you said simply, before wondering what your companion would say. His full name is down as Wizard_of_Change - it would break immersion a bit to demand to be called that in full. He seems to be at a loss, so you quickly just decide for him as the kindly woman begins waiting patiently or an answer. “-This is my friend, Wiza--ah, um, Wiz. Yeah,” - Ryou sighs with relief when you say this, though you don’t notice this.

“Lovely to meet you both, I’m Arcadia - and I’m the Chieftan of Spellwicks Village. This place you’ve come to - it’s one of the humbler nexus points between magical worlds. We get a lot of you strangers coming through,” she picks out a few leaflets and turns to you two.

“What do you mean, a nexus point?” Ryou asked, he’s a little excited, because this dialogue tree sounds like it could potentially lead to a quest.

“Mhm. Where the barrier between magical domains and beastlands are thinnest. You won’t find Spellwicks on many maps, but when spellcasters are teleporting to a safe place but have nowhere in mind, there is a chance you might end up here. More often fae-mages than fae warriors, or roguish kinds,” her eyes flick to you “-but you’re magical regardless, so you both belong here.”

Your mind was spinning with information - beastlands, multiple magical domains, teleportation? Is this how spawning in for the first time looks? Like teleportation?

“Um, thank you?” you said lamely.

“Speaking of maps, though,” Ryou interjects, looking at Arcadia “-we would very much appreciate it if you could point us to some?” to which she simply hands over what is in her hands with a knowing look.

“Ah ah ah, you don’t have to tell me what you need. I’ve done this often enough - don’t you know where you are dears? This is the Village Hall, it doubles as a visitor centre,” she moves a little so you can both see the rack of assorted leaflets, which looked so ordinary it was almost like a travel bureaux you’d see at a bus station or railway line.

“And I am very familiar with lost souls!” she chuckled. “That’s an overworld map of the different domains and where their known physical nexus points are. But we have some of Spellwicks Village, and the larger magical capital. You can help yourselves, no charge - it’s what it’s here for,” - you mentally filed away ‘magical capital city’ and began picking through maps, whilst Ryou busied himself asking Arcadia questions, trying to prise out what he could from the dialogue tree. He was absolutely fascinated with exhausting aspects of virtual reality, but for you, you’d at least played Legendary Heroes and Virtual World 2, so you were a little less dazed, even if this the best and most complex VR world to date.

“Thank you Misses Arcadia,” said Ryou politely, before wondering how to segue into a conversation where, for once, he is not the Game Master. VR, by its very nature, is very different from Monster World RPG.

It was frighteningly close to a real conversation with an actual stranger, and Ryou Bakura isn’t the best at those.

“But we’re a little strapped for money, you wouldn’t um, happen to know how we could…earn our keep? We’ll need to be able to get supplies if we want to travel, or stay here,” he fumbles for the phrasing, but Arcadia just lets out a thoughtful little sound, and begins idling for a moment, before lighting up with a few ideas. You look up at Ryou’s question - because it’s a reasonable one, and quickly stuff as many maps as you can into the chest of your armour, currently lacking access to your locked inventory.

“Well, Purella, our village alchemist, is always in need of ingredients. I’m sure if you went foraging, she’d happily pay for your services. It’s much harder for her to get around these days, her daughter is a little handful!” Arcadia chuckled, before continuing to look thoughtful, and seemingly unaware of both yours and Ryou’s watches throwing up a prompt on whether to accept the quest.

“Oh… or there is one other thing, but I don’t know if…” she trails off, before sighing dramatically. “I don’t suppose either of you would be interested in checking up on Old Argus?”.

“Whose Old Argus?” you chirp brightly, bouncing on your feet a little in anticipation. Despite the lack of basics, it seems the two of you managed to stumble on some quests, at least!

“He’s - ah, disagreeable. A disagreeable old gent,” Arcadia settled on that “He lives in the tower at the edge of the Weeping Willows. He usually comes by once a week for potion supplies and to snap at the youngsters, but he hasn’t been by in a while, and some of his little… home protection charms have been acting up, occasionally spilling out trouble into our village. I haven’t had a chance to check on him, with all our new guests turning up…”.

“What sort of trouble?” Ryou asked, looking on his overworld map while Arcadia spoke.

“Oh, just your standard wizard’s rubbish - like errant golems and seeping black magic mist fogs that are rather off-putting, it could be dangerous, though, little ones. Argus isn’t keen on visitors,” Arcadia grimaced “-but if you do, do this. I can make it worth your while,”.

Ryou looks at you, and you look at him, before excusing yourselves from Arcadia to both look at your watches, and then at one another again.

You could tell from the enthralled excitement that the boy quietly exuded that he wanted to do it, and however shy he seemed, he didn’t seem to be put off by the promise of danger. You yourself thought whatever was happening with this ‘Argus’ guy was more interesting than a fetch quest, but at the end of it, you end up agreeing to both quests.

By the end of the fetch quest, the pair of you have some basic low-level health and mana restoration potions for your troubles, and a handful of coins each, with a free battered bag that unlocked the locked inventory slots you and Ryou had.

Returning to Arcadia, she gave you a simple bone and wood dagger to use, made from the bones of the local wildlife, and gave Ryou his first, real spell, before wishing you both well and sincerely hoping that you’d both make it back to her in one piece.

The pair of you walk through the trees and foliage with one map open between you both, each holding one side of it so you could both agree on a direction and where to go. It being a level one sort of area, there isn’t terribly much around besides butterflies, bugs and flowers. You wondered briefly, if you’d encounter any hostiles before you got to the end of the Weeping Willows, because it was seeming less and less likely.

“Oh, dear. Hey, um, Babylon?” Ryou asked, cautiously, before moving his finger to the edge of the woods.

“Yeah, Wiz?”

“According to the map, it’s called The Vindictive Tower,” Ryou grimaced - and you followed his finger, before letting out a short noise of nervous excitement, and miss Ryou’s awkward reaction to hearing his nickname spoken directly from your mouth - albeit in VR, it makes him strangely shy, before he realises, he’s never had a nickname before. He’s so used to having so few friends besides Yugi and the gang, that such a mundane little thing is completely lost on him.

He spent a great majority of his time losing his friends and isolating himself, because of the Spirit of the Ring. In fact, playing Millennia with you, a stranger, was the first time he’d really branched out beyond anybody with a Sennen Item for friendship, and not suffered a horrific cost for it as a result.

Yugi and his friends were a dip of the toe in the social waters, this is the first time in a long time he’s branched beyond that and gone in this deep with somebody new.

It’s refreshing, and sparks just a little bit of hope in him that maybe he can fill in some of the truly horrendous gaps that the Spirit of the Sennen Ring had ripped into his life, stealing and cursing whole sections of his childhood and later years.

The way you’re looking at him, bursting with nervous excitement and anticipation - he thinks for a moment that he just might be able to.

“Shiiit,” you sucked in through your teeth, before letting out a little tut. “I guess spellcasters are a bit more dramatic than a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign,” - and Ryou, well, he couldn’t help it. He laughed. It started as a nervous sort of giggle, before it erupted into a genuine sort of laugh, that made his chest feel so light for a moment that he swears he must be smiling in his KCV, back home in his computer chair.

He completely misses Yugi Mutou’s text, telling him he’ll be online later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {{{...A/N: You guys spawned in "The Secret Village of the Spellcasters"
> 
> https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Village_of_the_Spellcasters
> 
> \- substantial update with the storming of The Vindictive Tower may not be until the weekend - working from home and all (ugh) anyway - this is my first go at Slice of Life. You diggin it? }}}


	3. LVL 2 - The Vindictive Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryou Bakura wants to be brave. 
> 
> You want to show him a good time.  
>    
> Together, you fight.
> 
> His father notices a change.  
> 

Chapter Two

_Level Two_

**{The Vindictive Tower}**

The Weeping Willows gained their name from the fact that the further away from the village they got, the darker, and more sloped the trees seemed to get, bending and arching along the path to the tower.They bent as though they bore a terrible weight the further in the pair of you got, and even some of the bark against the trees would splinter at the force of the bend, as though something wickedly unnatural had bent and twisted them.

There’s significantly less people treading this route, though they can be heard not too far in the distance, it feels like there aren’t terribly many testers focused on this questline. Ryou thought that it might just naturally be awkward, but there are so many things to look at and explore than there is little time for that to happen. That, or perhaps he’s more comfortable in your presence than he realises. The periods of quiet between you are content, and easy - if it was meant to be awkward, neither of you acknowledged it. There is only ambient forest noises, crunching leaves and the crinkle of the shared paper in both of your hands.

The Vindictive Tower slowly comes into view, and stands tall above the slouching willows as an ancient pillar. Each red brick that made up the tower walls seemed to have moss and greenery interspersed between the cracks, with weeds beginning to blossom. It doesn’t look terribly frightening to warrant the name it has, but worryingly, there are no doors, or windows that either of you can immediately see. It is just a large, red bricked monstrosity that sits at the edge of the woods and glares out against the rest of the natural environment like an unwelcome blemish on the otherwise enchanting landscape.

Ryou is momentarily blind-sided by the oddness of how it looks against the backdrop of the rest of this magical place, until you make a move towards him. He yelps a little when he feels your hand on the back of his head, forcing him down into some bushes. You’re crouched, and peering through the leaves with trepidation. You put your fingers on your lips to signify quiet, which he thankfully catches on to. Ryou looked over at you in confusion and slight alarm until he followed your stare, and sees a mischievous smile reflecting back at him.

“Big rock guy dead ahead,” you whispered, excitement bubbling inside of you - you had a fair amount of steam to blow off, and were itching to get into combat.

Ryou squinted, and after a few moments of silence, his eyes lit up in recognition.

“That’s a duel monster for sure - stone soldier or something? It’s one of - “ he stops himself short of name dropping, but only just. “-It’s in one of my friend’s decks,” he cannot remember the name exactly, but it is somewhat familiar.

The rock creature is skulking the perimeter of the tower, and stands impossibly tall at a little over 8” ft in height and at least 400 lbs just from the looks of it. It moves like a mountain on legs, slow and lumbering, but has two jagged blades that look to also be made of some sort of rock. It felt like that creature might dwarf you ten times over just in size.

Ryou let out a short exhale and radiated a sort of nervous excitement. He’s never fought anything in virtual reality before, and so it does take him a moment to steel himself for combat. It isn’t often he’s played a game that is this physical in nature that did not cost him his soul. He even thinks his fingers might be jittering in his computer chair at home, because his in-game avatar is. You, however, had some considerable front-facing experience with Legendary Heroes in terms of physical combat games, but, this was the first iteration of KaibaCorp virtual reality that had managed to nail your body-type and physical sensations with such high accuracy. Your body in the game would even move as though it had armoured clothes on, and having synced it with your KaibaCorp smartwatch, a ridiculous amount of your biometric data was poured into your avatar in terms of height, weight and muscle spread over different parts of your body.

This filled you with a healthy amount of doubt and trepidation about whether you could take that thing, but nonetheless, you were charged with excitement.

“If it’s anything like its card counterpart, it will probably have a high defence, but it’s big and slow,” Ryou whispered, pointing to the lumbering stone soldier as it walked. True enough, its movements seemed practically belaboured by its sheer size.

You made a point of brandishing your small, wood and bone blade, and quickly pull up its damage statistics from your watch with a grimace.

“This could be a problem. No chance he’s friendly, right?” you asked dryly, because judging from its skulking presence and perimeter march of the tower, it was almost definitely a guardian and probably part of the unfriendly welcome that Arcadia had warned you both about.

Ryou looked at his own statistics, and shrugged at your question.

“You can try and talk to him,” Ryou suggested “-and I can hang back and cast my shield spell if he’s not, I’ve got - um, a basic level one five second shield,” he’s flicking through his attacks through his watch. “Arcadia gave me level one ‘Lacklustre Lance’ spell - drains a small amount of mana and gives it to the caster, and drains a small amount of health - explodes on impact, medium cost. I can back you up a little. If it gets hairy, this staff has some melee damage but it’s pretty weak,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck and feeling just a little bit cowardly. However, he’d never really fought in VR before, and wanted to get a feel for it first.

Ryou Bakura never used to think he was terribly brave, but surviving the Ring and all that came with it had shown him otherwise. He could help - and he would, he thought resolutely, because this is just a game, and not the high stakes he was so used to whenever he engaged in a game. There was no threat of an unending void, suffering, or a permanent death. There was no threat of a coma, or the heaving burden that would sear heat into his skin when the Sennen Ring would pierce his chest repeatedly.

_‘It’s just a game_ ,’ he would remind himself, trying to hold onto his anxious excitement. Ryou wanted to be brave, he really did.

He just needed a little push.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say he’s not friendly. Anyway, we need some XP, right?” and with that, you make a decision.

As though sensing his trepidation, you grinned and spring out from the bush, moving quietly behind the large, hulking stone mass. The closer you got to it, the more imposing the thing seemed - it reminded you of one of the larger duel monsters you had faced a year or two ago when you did a replay of Legendary Heroes champion’s arena.

The giant stone creature however, looked a damn sight more imposing than Zushin the Sleeping Giant, just purely by the fact his skin is impenetrable rock. Zushin at least had a large, bulbous body and fleshy muscles that at least assured you he could be harmed and lacked the armoured flesh. You threw one quick glance at the bush that your new friend was hiding under, before noticing a thin, shimmering, white veneer on your body from head to toe.

Was that the shield spell? You expected more of a barrier wall, but took it to mean reduced damage at the very least. With a bounce and a flourish, you recall there were two ways to initiate special attacks and moves, declaring them - which physically engages your body in the relevant movement animation, or physically initiating the partial-movement beginning steps of the move in question which would auto-trigger the attack. Being moved in this manner took some adjusting, of course, because it was far different from going in and charging, but the giant stone soldier was _huge,_ and could swat you like a bug if you weren’t careful.

For Ryou’s benefit - because you are a veteran of KaibaCorp and its VR technology, you swivel easily on the right heel of your Dorothy shoe in what looks like a twirl, and spring upwards into the air and declare your attack, which eliminated the stealthier aspect, but you still at least had some element of surprise. You're launched into the air with a dainty grace that Ryou has come to associate with female avatars in many of his online games, with an almost ballet-like nimble start, he can see your body more clearly as the red-hooded cloak is flurrying upwards. He can only marvel at just how high the rogue-faes can jump, before he hears you declare a special move.

“ _Puri Puri Pounce!”_ feeling a jolt of energy as you began to dip down once reaching apex single-jump height, there's an almost physical sensation beneath your feet that you can bounce off of. You’re able to jump again, springing off of it - but with a more forward lunge, flurrying you forward into the back of the stone guardian’s face. It is even slower to turn around, moving its arms achingly snail-like pace.

Ryou quickly has the forethought to tap his pointed ear and use the Whisper function to speak into your left ear, whilst quickly attempting to warm up his first offensive spell.

_“How do you already have a double jump? Rogues don’t get that until their stamina levels up!”_ his eyes are glued to you as he speaks - he’d read some of the beta tester forum posts and was a little shocked, watching you brandish the almost comically small blade in comparison to the soldier when you hook your legs around its head and begin erratically swiping at the rock, sending small pebble flecks from its head as you petulantly began striking at it with an almost childlike glee.

You can feel the tension of your day slipping off with every little swipe you made, which began to run small cracks on impact against the giant tower guardian's skin.

The soldier attempts to pluck you off, but the ease with which you simply slide down his body like an uncomfortable pole is enough to get a short, frenzied laugh out of your friend. Your feet hit the ground and you're keen to get out of his way, but don't quite hit the grass fast enough.

As level one fights go, this is pretty comical, and any anxiety he had about fighting the monster began to dissipate when he swipes at you, and your body glowed briefly with a faint pale glow - and a small, red bar hovering nearby the back of your cloak, hovers behind you, though remaining full.

It wasn’t going to last long, however, and you quickly do your best to strafe to the left to avoid the hefty, thick little stone blade it was trying to slowly lunge for you.

“ _Lacklustre Lance!_ ” Ryou yells quickly, feels an almost intangible weight in right hand, while the long, spindly wooden staff in his left practically vibrates with power. He’s standing at full height now, a determined look in his eye when a blue, shimmering lance with an ethereal translucent quality fully formed in his palm.

Ryou Bakura can feel his heart pounding when he lets it fly. There is very little athleticism required to actually launch the lance, it seems to only need a little direction before it flies out of his fingers and burrows viciously towards the stone guardian, before shattering in a shower of pale blue light and stealing a small chunk of its health. As much as a level one spell could, at any rate, but you seemed to be steadily distracting it, dodging and weaving as best you could.

“Seriously, _Puri Puri Pounce?_ ” he’s run out of the bushes now, because you’re determined to keep the guardians attentions while he slowly charges and fires spell lances at it. This distracts you for just a moment, though, and it’s at that moment the stone guardian manages to land a blow.

“Oh, **_**shit!**_** ” you swore, feeling yourself getting thrown into the wall of the nearby tower, when the stone guardian lands a blow, which got an genuine noise of pain, arms and legs sprawled against the brick like a washed up starfish. Though it isn’t anything quite like real life, it registers like a sharp sting to your back and you physically cringe. He is large enough that much of your body felt the entire brace of its slow fist, luckily the stone blade held inside of it seemed to get your torso, and at least didn’t hit anywhere critical. There is, however, a decidedly less comical spatter of blood that appears on yourself and the ground nearby in a somewhat exaggerated movie-esque manner that reminded Ryou vaguely of his collection of B-rate horror movies.

With the level of realism, he has to remind himself that it isn’t real - and as if on cue, you manage to let out a braggadocios, playful yell, despite wincing.

“-just a scratch!” you holler, though there is an unmistakable, musical lilt that betrayed your enjoyment and unwound a fraction more of Ryou’s concern.

‘ _Just a game. Just a game. Just a game,_ ’ he thinks, on monotonous loop to try and ground himself.

With that in mind, he charges forward with the long, spindly mage staff, and tries to disarm the giant soldier by aiming for its naturally gauntleted stone fists - it must look like David and Goliath to anyone who might pass, but right now, Ryou doesn’t care.

His heart is pounding. There’s no real risks. He’s having fun.

_And it’s almost real._

“Yeah, I got _Puri Puri Pounce_ , I’ve got the _-agh-_ stamina!” you said, hitting the back of your heels against the brick tower to spring into a wall jump and torpedo yourself with all the speed you could manage, your hooded cloak flurrying around you as you do, aiming for the back of the stone guardian as it turns its attention to Ryou.

Ryou dodges with some ease, though he’s a little slower than you, and your much more physically abrasive and aggravating assaults were greatly distracting to the slow, easily disoriented guardian. You barely feel the blow of the stone against you when Ryou quickly casts a passive buffer on you, but he notices now the sizeable cracks your attacks were managing to cause in its armoured flesh.

“I - told - you! I synced!” _strike_ “ -my- ” _strike_ “KCWatch!” you yell between attacks. He is, briefly, taken aback by how practiced you seemed. Your experience with VR was showing, if nothing else, but even your movements seem smoother, slicker and more natural than his own. There is a certain enviable elasticity to your in-game body that he isn’t sure if simply a rogue quality or one of your own, or a mix of both.

“So?” Ryou replied, quickly having the foresight to hold his staff out lengthways and quickly block the stone soldier who was trying to now bear down on him with both clenched fists. He swallows thickly and stands strong, his feet moving back against the grass only slightly as the great guardian begins pushing down on him as hard as he can, which makes him inch ever so slightly backwards under each blow.

You slide underneath the stone guardian in a rather daring move, swiping up underneath it - not that it had any sensitive anatomy to target - but was certainly not a stance the monster could easily break, which took a devastatingly huge chunk of it’s overall health - much to Ryou's relief.

Quickly, you slide forwards to the base of Ryou’s cloak, and continue to swipe low, while the impossibly large beast is stuck swiping high, largely at your friend. His size greatly limits his ability to target you when you're swiping from the ground, and it's now you have a moment to reply amidst the heat of the battle.

“So! My real life stats are in the game!” you replied hastily, glancing up at Ryou who exudes a new sense of bravery and quiet strength beneath his Venetian mask. While he isn’t attacking overly much, he’s sustaining a fair amount of blows with grace and low damage - his natural blocking buffs are truly showing their benefit.

“What -? Ah no! He’s double punching!” Ryou yelled, train of thought cut off by another pair of slamming fists that he deftly blocks with the sideways turned staff, feeling a powerful stinging sensation coursing through his fingers and arms.

“I’ll keep him distracted, just keep going!” he adds, quickly “-He’s low on health!” he insists, because he's locked into defending himself right now and doesn't want to face the damage of being swiped at while he tries to back away and charge another lance attack.

While Ryou is distracting the guardian by taking most of the hits, you land a final blow aimed squarely at the largest crack in his stone flesh that the pair of you manage to cause, causing him to begin to come to a grinding halt, freezing mid strike as bits of rock begin disintegrating in heavy chunks before they hit the grass below.

The pair of you stare at the creature, it’s slow to finally die, but the time it takes gives you and Ryou a moment to collect yourselves.

Ryou then holds his staff back to his side, and rests the length of his body against it as he observes the hits taken to his different statistics with a relieved sigh.

"You," he said after a second short sigh "-are crazy," though there isn't any malice in his tone. In fact, it sounds something close to exasperated amusement. "-jumping on that thing's head," he muttered.

You remain on the grass, before deciding to kick back for a moment, and sprawl yourself exaggeratedly over the ground, laying down at your friend's feet. You look up curiously behind your mouthguard into the mysterious, unyielding Venetian mask that adorned his character, and smiled, even though he couldn't see it.

"And that! Is how you fight in virtual reality," 

* * *

At first, Akio Bakura, father of Ryou Bakura, was both concerned and somewhat bothered by the more demure and socially awkward aspects of his son. He hasn't been the most present in the boy's life, yes, but it doesn't erase the fact that he does, in fact, care. As misspent as much of his life had been after the passing of his wife and daughter, and the devotion to the very thing which had ultimately cursed his son into awkward semi-solitude, he wasn't bereft of personal responsibility. Over the past two years, but this year especially, he's been doing his best to bridge the canyon that had come between himself and the only remaining vestige of the once functional family unit they had. 

He had spent too long travelling, too long building up his private collection, too long bartering for stolen Incan treasures and ancient Egyptian amulets. Too much of his time had been spent in auction halls or in airports, wheeling and dealing in the name of preserving his lifestyle and Domino Museum. He had excused it, of course, by calling it his legacy - his real legacy - the legacy that he was leaving for Ryou, to secure for him, which had felt all the more poignant the more apparent it became to Akio that his son did not know what to do with his future. It was, however, just an excuse - and he realises that now. It had jarred him to reality the day Ryou had felt the need to explain to him that "the Ring is gone for good. You don't have to avoid me so much."

It wasn't spiteful, or said out of malice - that's what it made it worse. That for a very long time, Ryou Bakura had assumed his father couldn't stand to be around the Sennen Ring, because it had rejected him, and damned his son, something his own obsession with it had led to. Perhaps it was guilt, or resentment of what it had done, for all the times Akio had to pull Ryou out of school and beg to get him a spot mid-year in another, and another, and another still. Perhaps it was disgust, knowing his gentle boy had somehow landed a string of people in comas for the sheer crime of trying to befriend him when he was a host to something so terrible and dark. These were all assumptions that had swirled in his head for years, so when the Ring was now truly and utterly lost, after all that had transpired with Aigami and the Prana, when he finally sat his father down, one crisp summer night to explain it all...

It damn near broke Akio Bakura's heart.

He had been the absentee father for so long that he was trying so hard to catch up with his boy, and help him take charge of his future. He didn't criticise him when Ryou admitted he didn't know what he wanted to do after graduation, and that he didn't know what to study, or if he even wanted to. He listened when Ryou told him he has huge, horrid blank spots in his life that the Ring Spirit had stolen from him and he has felt so terribly adrift and lost as a result. He gave him a job in Domino Musuem to fill his time, and his resumé - and try to bring them closer, and he was staying home more, conducting more auctions online, and trying to be there, and cook for them both. Ryou's an adult now though, he knows he's missed out on some truly precious time, but he's doing his best. So he is rightfully concerned when it feels like Ryou's only hobby is plugging himself into virtual reality. 

He's going out less, and he was concerned - for a moment, anyway, until he hears his son laughing from his closed bedroom door. Not the haunting, malevolent laughter of the demon that had dwelled in the Ring, but honest, true laughter that could only ever belong to his boy.

_When was the last time he even heard that sound?_

He falters outside of his son's door, standing for a moment. He doesn't want to listen in, and breach his adult son's privacy, but the sound of his laugh is so rare that he has to stand there and listen to it. So, he does, for a moment anyway - and as he's turning to leave for the bathroom, he hears a female laugh coming out of his desktop speakers.

At first, he thinks he's watching something funny, a comedy show perhaps. Did his boy like comedy shows? Or slice of life anime?

_"You're ridiculous Babi-chan, how much are you working out if your stats are that high? No wonder that Knight thinks we're cheating!"_

He can barely hear the reply, but he's frozen for a moment, because he doesn't know who this friend is - he only vaguely knows that there's a girl who hangs out with Ryou's old friends from Domino High, but he remembers dropping Ryou off at the airport to say goodbye to her with the rest of his friends, they're currently abroad. So it can't be her, and he is certain that they're not at all familiar. In fact, he isn't sure he's ever heard his son be so familiar with someone outside of that Mutou boy. He is bemused, and feeling more and more like he's invading his privacy, but is too curious to walk away.

_"Okay okay, I'll go take a break for dinner. I don't want to complete the Tower with some random, I'll be half an hour, will you wait for me?"_

Ryou's father takes that as his cue to continue walking to the bathroom, an apprehensive but curious smile slowly stretching onto his features.

Maybe he was worrying too much.

Dinner is usually a tasty but quiet affair, with both of them asking cautious questions about the other's day. Ryou however, seems distracted, because he clearly wants to leave the table, and if he had his way, would be eating dinner in his bedroom. Dinner is a quick dish of chicken noodles for the pair of them while he taps idly on his smartphone - and Akio considers briefly banning phones from the table, before deciding his son was probably too old for all of that, and just shakes his head with the same apprehensive smile from earlier.

"Slow down, it's not going anywhere," said Akio after a moment as his son wolfs down his bowl of noodles between his fervent mobile tapping.

"Sorry," Ryou looks up, sheepish, and finally stops tapping his phone, sliding it into his pocket. "Everything okay, dad?" he asks, sparing him a thought at least.

"Fine, fine," Akio replied, wondering when it would stop feeling like he's having elevator conversation with his own flesh and blood. "-It's just been a long day. Shipping company has some delay on some of the African pieces I'm getting in. I've had my hands full. Everything been alright while I've been busy?" he presses, but doesn't bring up the female voice he overheard, no matter how badly he wants to. The last thing he wants to do is get Ryou to go defensive, and shut him out completely.

"Yeah," Ryou smiles - genuinely smiling - the sort that actually reaches his eyes. "Yugi got me beta access to KaibaCorp's new VR title. I made a friend on there, I think," - at this, Akio feels his heart warm, just for a moment. He wasn't the sort to place heavy stock in internet friends but, if they're important to Ryou, then they definitely matter, and anything that gets him to smile like that is a good thing, he thinks, as long as he keeps going out. Still, from the slim thing he overheard, the person he plays with is conscious of when to stop, or Ryou would probably still be on that damn game right now, so for that he is grateful.

"That's nice," he replied, gingerly and unsure of his own take on the matter.

Okay, so _maybe_ Akio Bakura is a little bit of a boomer and doesn't understand internet friendships, but he's going to try, at any rate.

"Actually, dad," Ryou picks up on the silence that his father's awkward reply had left, and it's now that Ryou looks bashful and awkward himself. He's not good at just asking for things from his father outright, because his dad usually provided him with everything he needed anyway and he rarely felt the need to be spoil himself for more, so he feels truly out of his depth now.

"Yes, son?"

"Can I get an advance on my wages?" he asked quickly, cheeks burning. 

Akio doesn't say no, but arches a grey eyebrow that silently demands an answer from his squirming son.

"I want to buy a KaibaCorp smartwatch," he blurts it out so fast it's almost like word vomit, like he's embarrassed to ask for something expensive and pointless, and it's so unnecessary that he's conscious of how juvenile he sounds. Akio's eyes, however, seem to glint with a small measure of amusement as well as surprise - considering how little Ryou asks of him, it is something he considers. His boy, without the Ring, is sensible to a fault, and can generally be trusted to not squander his cash. He may splurge on Battlehammer figurines but he's generally spending his wages on smart clothes or putting it in savings, but those watches could get costly, and he hasn't been working at the museum terribly long.

"What's brought this on?" Akio asks, bemused at his son's request - he's never been the type to whinge for the latest gadget, so it's more of a surprise than anything. Maybe Mutou had one, and he wanted one, but as much as a go-with-the-flow type his son could be, he isn't a follower, of that, Akio is certain.

"I just think.... I should be going out more," Ryou replied, phrasing his answer carefully. "I'll be more... I'll want to do it if I have a way to track it. You know?" he said, though his ears are burning a pale pink shade and Akio can tell it's not the whole truth, the partial answer is still a good one.

"Fair enough, I'll consider it."

Maybe he was worrying about his boy for nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sksksks sorry for the short chapter, I just wanted to push this out because I want to get right to the juicy characterisation but i was procrastinating over laying out the VR game because writing it isn't nearly as fun as observing it a-la Sword Art Online. SO eh. You'll notice time jumps between in-game stuff bc as much as I love benny hill fights (bc really that fight with Giant Soldier of Stone was some benny hill shit) - there's not really a deep VR story. It's more about how they feel playing & how they express themselves in each other's company. The VR game is just a place I can dump shonen fights & silly stuff in between character stuff. Which I will be sinking my teeth into wholeheartedly for the next chapter. Much of this is already planned out you see, and it's spilling into IRL at a quick, quick pace :')


	4. A Break in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of Babylon.
> 
> An unwelcome intrusion.
> 
> A little sweet moment.

Chapter Three

_Level Two_

****{A Break in Time}** **

She’s too nauseous for a taxi or public transport, and by the standards of Japan, getting into either when constantly feeling like they need to throw up is a huge taboo and the consequences are steep. Monetarily, mostly - the cleaning fee in a taxi would be enough to seriously set you back. Hanako is a mess, and she’s thrown up in the bathroom of the internet cafe you manage to drag her to. She’s a sweet little creature, with long brown hair and soft, doe-like eyes, round face and overall baby-features that so many women seem to pine for in this neck of the woods. It is almost entirely mismatched against her drunken demeanour which reeks of rambunctious misbehaviour typically assigned to people much older. She’s just turned twenty one, and hadn’t the kind of alcoholic fortitude she thought she had.

“Mama-san,” she burbled, hiccuping slightly, tasting the acidic, unpleasant tang of vomit on her lips. Hanako is partially slumped in the private lounge of the little internet cafe. It is a small way away from the modest little shower room it had, providing a changing room for weary travellers, and salarymen who missed the last train home that needed to stay the night, or underemployed workers who couldn’t make regular rent on an apartment. The coed space is empty, and you are sat beside your friend, whose leaning into your side as you dab her off with a towel. “-’m really sorry,” Hanako’s voice is hoarse from how strained her throat is - she had her head leaning into a toilet for quite a while.

You don’t react to Hanako’s mumbles, and patiently dry off the ends of her hair, before helping her with her drunkenly mismatched blouse buttons. You’d let her attempt it a few times, until you began to fix it and she gives you a watery smile in gratitude.

“I can stay here,” Hanako continues, only for you to tut with gentle exasperation at her proposal. You’d handed the staff at the desk a handful of yen for an hour or two of the shower facilities and not much more than that. There aren’t very many places open that someone as inebriated as Hanako can go, and you all but dragged her into the sleepy little internet cafe to get cleaned up.

“You should go home,” Hanako groaned, and you just sigh. ’ _As if that mattered now.’_ was the passing thought, though it wasn’t resentful. Your usual frenzied, energetic excitement was now reduced to light exasperation. Your smartwatch rubs on your arm in gentle reminder, and you can see it connecting to the public WiFi as little message notifications begin to fly on the screen, as though reminding of you of where you should be _\- laid up in your bedroom, relaxing_ and _decompressing._

“No, you’re going to want to sleep in your own bed with how much you’ve put away. This is just a pit stop - you done being sick?” at this, she flushes a little more, though it is hard to tell against her already visible lack of sobriety. If Hanako is embarrassed by her state, she doesn’t show it. Her expression is that of implicit trust, the way she smiles and leans her entire body against you as much as she can, sighing contently until you shove a water bottle under her nose.

“Drink up Hanako,” you said, insistence in your tone as she held the bottle tightly between her palms when she took it from you.

“I’m taking you home,” - you’d only paid for a few hours, after all, with the last of the crumpled yen from the undersized cross-body that was hanging at your side. It was dreadfully empty, carrying only your phone, a few forms of ID, tissues, keys, small leather ziplock, and a tiny tube-shaped keychain-sized portable battery pack. You didn’t even need to glance at your phone though, you’ve caught the messages out of the corner of your eye whenever you glance at your wrist. The TeamTalk mobile app is connected to it too, but unlike virtual reality, the real-world counterpart of the KCWatch didn’t splay out a large array of options in mid-air but vibrated quietly with shrunk down notifications on screen that began to stack ever since you’d left Club AreGah with Hanako. There’s quite a few - mostly texts from friends that were still in the building, who might be wondering where the pair of you are. Most of them are staying out until the first early-morning train at least, but Hanako had tapped out at around 4AM - early, by the nightlife standards of Japan, but you didn’t want her pushing herself past the point of no return just because she felt obligated to.

Hanako nods, before beginning to look a bit embarrassed when you pull out the small, square leather ziplock and unfurl some rolled up after party elastic pumps that roll into unimpressive black ballet flats. It’s now that she hides a little of her face behind her hair, because this is what got her embarrassed.

“Eh? Mama-san, you don’t - you don’t have to do that,” Hanako said, cringing behind her hair when you squat down to her feet, knowing she didn’t quite have the coordination to get these on her feet by herself. Mostly though, Hanako is embarrassed that she’s being given your emergency shoes, that you carried after every Cheer social you were compelled to organise and attend. “-They’re yours,” Hanako said, insistently “-don’t your feet hurt?”.

“Shut up,” you grin up at her as good naturedly as you can manage all things considered. “-I wouldn’t wear _heels as big as my attitude_ if I couldn’t handle it,” ignoring the dull ache in the base of your feet as you said it. Hanako puts the water bottle down to put her face in her hands and letting out a defeated noise. You make a point to carry her shoes after that - they’re pretty nice and she’d probably be gutted if she lost them, but she doesn’t have the wherewithal to keep track of much.

“You heard that?” she groaned, guilty she had let those words pass unchallenged.

“I’m aware of what people think about me,” you replied with ease, pulling the sides of your bodycon down your hips, the dull rose-gold sequins grazing uncomfortably against your skin. “-and I’ve definitely heard worse, now c’mon. Stand up,” you raise to full height, dwarfing Hanako even more now in a large pair of matching wedges, with only a thin cream bolero to defend against the bitter cold of the early-morning skies.

You definitely weren’t drunk enough to not feel this cold.

Hanako seems steadier by the time the pair of you leave the cafe though, and only hooks your left arm loosely to keep your pace, the other hand focused entirely on keeping the bottled water down. The streets aren’t empty, and the pair of you at least don’t stick out too much as revellers, as you’re hardly the only ones. Faces were lit up in the constant stream of night time neon and a near constant stream of large, differently sized and placed TV screens awash with advertisements. It was truly the land that never slept, not even for a moment.

Hanako was the kind of drunk where she could walk for miles without feeling it. You, however, were not - and needed to recharge. Essentially led by the nose, the pair of you walk the streets of Shinjuku until the visible beacon of the train station comes into view.

There’s a pop-up ramen van there - a yatai - where busy night workers and revellers often stop before hitting the trainline. There’s a half hour before the first one even starts up, and you’re out of cash - but Hanako stumbles in front, and insists on paying for the pair of you.

So much of your social life felt like it ended at a pop-up ramen stand and a cold train station bench, with aching feet.

It’s now, sat down beside Hanako with a small disposable container filled with noodles in your lap, trying not to spill any down your front, that you glance at your KCWatch.

_Aiko: Where are you? We (…)_

_Ichika: U okay? We going to (…)_

You click it and see a missed call or two and sigh, swiping it away after punching out a quick two word text and peel through a few more general alerts.

_EK: Hey babe (..)_

Your eyes narrow and you leave it unread, swiping it away quickly and pulling down the time, before you notice the TeamTalk app between the flurry of icons and push notifications. Between that and the time, you click it and notice a few active conversations - but notice the direct message. You didn’t even _think_ about the scheduled gaming session. It had been the last thing on your mind to be honest, though you do feel a twinge of guilt, because you make a point not to flake out on scheduled talks, but to be honest, you didn’t expect the social to stretch on long into the night. But then there was some spill over when some of the girls called their friends and partners from other clubs, and it had quickly snowballed into an all night affair.

You’re looking at your watch, staring at the neon butterfly icon that shimmers on the clock face that has a gentle, soothing water theme when you press your finger to operate it, and make a tired mental note to respond to the messages. It isn’t your foremost concern right now - though. It’s Hanako, who at least seems more alert after getting something solid to line her gut with and she reassured you up and down that she was no longer nauseous and would be fine to take a train. The cafe had helped a lot, apparently, and her complexion seems better - so you trust her.

“Sorry,” Hanako mumbled again, for what felt like the billionth time when the pair of you take pause between slurping noodles. She looks guilty again, and is idly tossing her noodles from side to side with the end of a chopstick. “-For making you leave early. Did you at least get that guy’s socials?” she pries a little, because she saw you abandon a tall, bleach-blond male you’d been chatting to that came with you from the izakaya that the club social had originally started at, to come over to her and ask if she alright.

“Don’t worry about it,” you replied, and go on to assure her when you see her doubtful expression “-hardly anyone ever meets the love of their life in a bar,” you joke, because Hanako is the sort of girl who beats herself up a lot and takes on unnecessary guilt and baggage if given half the chance, and you need her to know that it doesn’tmatter.

You’d danced with him a bit, but there wasn’t much talking done besides what amounted to elevator conversation between drinks. He did, however, seem fun - but you weren’t dwelling on it. He was already just a blur in the metaphorical rear view mirror.

Hanako laughed a bit at your casual tone, her cheeks pink.

“Eh, I guess you’re right. What was it you always tell us? _‘Don’t date Roppongi club trash?_ ’” she’s giggling now, remembering an old conversation that you felt like you’d had more than once with different members of your team.

“Yeah, don’t. Shinjuku’s got a nicer crowd, but club trash is club trash wherever it is at the end of the day. Just have fun and don’t think about them too much,” you punctuate the statement by slurping down the end of your ramen, the pair of you finishing just shy of the first early morning train trundling into the station.

“Ahh, what would we do without you Mama-san?” Hanako finished dramatically, throwing both of your empty takeaway boxes in the nearby disposal and shooting you a crooked grin.

“I shudder to think,” you replied wryly, swinging her heels in your hands ever so slightly, after you picked them up from under the waiting bench when the train doors open - while Hanako blushes, because she did, in fact, forget them there.

It was an hour commute back to Hiratsuka after that. The Cardinal Spellman University of Hiratsuka’s Cheerleading Society’s celebratory intercontinental championship after party was at end, for the pair of you at least.

* * *

Moments like this make you thankful for your quieter and less stringent student accommodation. Cardinal Spellman U had campus housing generally reserved for first years, and some endorsed private accommodate with different housing rules and fees attached. You were in Kasai International House, as Cardinal Spellman’s is a Roman Catholic university in name - one of the few smattering Japan with religious roots but were often private and highly competitive with huge English speaking programs and dedicated research facilities. They are the international hubs and gems of the Japanese educational system outside of the typically high performing public universities.

“Ergh, Sister Eunice is going to be such a bitch about this,” Hanako grimaced, before you snorted and just held her arm, guiding her away from campus once it was in sight.

Hanako’s student accommodation is one of the more religiously oriented, with in-house Sisters that, whilst they cannot tell Hanako off, being an adult and all, she did not wish to incur their judgement for how inebriated she managed to get. She didn’t want to stay there originally, but campus housing had filled up quick and she needed to move out of her parents place mid year due to some difficulties at home, and Higashi Nakano Dormitories were the only ones with any space at the time.

“C’mon, just crash at mine, just show your campus ID and it’ll be fine, we don’t have class tomorrow,” you said with a shrug. “Tell Sister Eunice you were at mine, she likes me. I don’t know where the Sisters get off judging anyone anyway. We’re in university, not elementary school,” they wanted to encourage good values and in truth, their existence was very valuable to the students that hadn’t left home before or otherwise could benefit from the structure and kindness they offered, but their watchful eyes and advice wasn’t something Hanako really ever wanted. You weren’t really religious yourself, and were mostly attending due to the scholarships, English-led classes and general university statistics rather than any faith based conviction, which was the case for a lot of students.

“Thank you,” Hanako mumbled “I’ll stay out the way,” she adds, and you wave it off dismissively. The dorms are still all-female and not coed unless you were prepared to pay for something that didn’t fall within the parameters of your scholarship and when the choice was that or live at home, you chose Kasai International House, which was easily the most lax out of the ‘recommended accommodations’ that CSU endorsed. There was a sleepy check-in desk that went as far as checking you were female and had a student ID, but otherwise didn’t seem to be overly watchful.

You guide her to your room past the empty common areas aside from the cleaning service doing their early rounds. You place her heels at the side of your door and keep the light off, opting to just turn on the bright lamp beside your desktop setup. She stumbles onto your bed and is able to prise the elasticated emergency flats with the tips of the shoe until they fling off near your ankles.

She falls asleep in her slimline black dress before you can even offer her any of your larger T-shirts. You finally slip out of your tall, matching rose-gold wedges and groan in relief when your aching heels and toes hit the soft, carpeted, flat floor.

The bolero comes off, and you shimmy out of the tight little sequin number and grab for the largest and longest shirt you have, and some old shorts, before sitting in the dimly lit room, your crossbody purse down the side of the bed. The daylight is peeking from underneath your blackout curtains, but you ignore it, in favour of turning off the lamp and sliding next to Hanako.

You glanced at your watch, rubbing your eyes tiredly. You only have a two unopened alerts, one from TeamTalk, and one from your SMS app. With a sigh, you get out your phone and grimace to yourself once you’re sure Hanako is fast asleep.

The two applications sit on your home screen invitingly, and you tap both, flicking between the conversation menus of both.

_SMS Inbox_

_EK: Hey babe. U up? (sent at 1:00AM)_

_EK: girl I miss u. I miss the way we used to be. (sent at 1:15AM)_

With a cringe, you realise these had built up, and there were a few more over the course of the night, and, not wanting to deal with it, you flick quickly to your TeamTalk application and idly mark your tech communities as Read and silence some of the chats you pay less attention to before sliding to your direct messages. This is where you see an an unread envelope sitting besides a familiar _Zombowwow_ display picture, and realise your new online friend had messaged you.

_TeamTalk Direct Messages_

_Wizard_of_Change: You ready to go? Or we rescheduling the raid? (sent at 12:00AM)_

_Wizard_of_Change voice called you at 12:05AM [disconnected]_

There’s a needle of guilt there, but a sigh of welcome relief fills you for a moment as the anxiety of the direct text messages fades away for a second when you focus on his messages. His icon has a little green light near it - is he online? At 6:40AM? Surely not.

_Wizard_of_Change: Hey, are you alright? Hope you’re good. (sent at 2:00AM)_

No neediness, no anger, no annoyance, just some concern, and unlike your text inbox, there isn’t a long ream of desperate offputting follow-ups. You flick back to your SMS app, and scowl when you scroll down the other messages. Messages from _him_ never fail to spike up your blood pressure, anxiety and overall stress and annoyance levels.

_SMS Inbox_

_EK: Ive been thinking about u_

_EK: cuz I’m coming down soon_

_EK: R u awake right now?_

_EK: message me x_

Irritation washes all over you and manifests as a dull ache in the back of your tired eyes. Thank God you didn’t have classes today. You just needed to check your emails and then get some sleep yourself, and apologise to Wiz a few times, and hope he remains as chill as he’s come across since you met him.

Your finger hesitates over which application to linger on, but you decisively slide into TeamTalk and open up a dialogue with Wiz. You at least owe him an apology, even if it just a gaming session, you always made a point to follow through on your word, and you promised you’d finish up earlier today and get online, getting the train to Shinjuku hadn’t even been on the _cards_ until the Basketball Society got involved.

Urgh, university parties really did turn into hell in a hand basket quick.

_TeamTalk Direct Messages_

_Babylon: Oh my God! I’m so sorry sorry sorry. Are you awake?_

_Wizard_of_Change: barely… are you ok?_

There still doesn’t seem to be any trace of annoyance, and you relax. Had this been your old Guildmaster, Doom_Tank, he would have pitched a fit and blown up your direct messages with all sorts of nonsense by now.

_Babylon: I hope you weren’t waiting up for me. My night got crazy. But I’m okay._

_Wizard_of_Change: I waited a bit but got caught up building my army on Absolute War: 2_

Ryou Bakura doesn’t want to admit he’d been up waiting, and it is true that he got caught up playing Absolute War: 2 on his computer while he was waiting for a reply, and then whittled the night away when he unlocked a large special event. But yes, he did, in fact - stay up and wait, because it didn’t feel right to go up the Spiral Staircase of the Vindictive Tower without you. He ended up spending most of the night playing different games with Yugi online before he had to go to bed. Thankfully, he asked his dad for a day off at least, so he didn’t have a work commitment to try and slog through after staying awake for so long.

His interest is piqued when you say your night had gotten crazy. He is tired, but in truth he knows little about what you do except the scant amount of what you reveal when a real life commitment gets in the way of a session. The last thing you said was that you were taking your club out for a social event at an izakaya, and that you were in university, but he didn’t know much beyond that.

Ryou doesn’t want to pry, and it isn’t in his nature usually, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t the least bit curious, because the kind of life you led had somehow gotten you some ridiculously high beginner statistics on your Millennia avatar, which was synced to your real life KCWatch, enough that he was considering investing in one himself, especially if more of KaibaCorp’s VR games were going to integrate real-world watch statistics as a gaming benefit. It was probably to balance out the amount of time serious players spend in virtual reality and to encourage real world activity - a great move, really, along with timed recommendations to take a break at certain points, but he was definitely curious about you.

_Wizard_of_Change: [quote text] My night got crazy. - Babylon [/end quote] How so?_

_Wizard_of_Change: Sorry if I’m prying._

You’re a bit surprised, but fall backwards onto your pillow, phone illuminating your face as you stare up at the TeamTalk app, ignoring the notifications sliding across the very top of the screen as persistent message alerts from SMS.

_SMS Push Notifications_

_EK: don’t leave me on rea…. [cont.]_

_Aiko: you get back okay? Ju… [cont.]_

You only respond to Aiko, and then slid right back to your direct messages with an exhausted yawn, too tired to mash buttons now, you just send a hoarse voice clip, absolutely shattered, finger pressing deftly over the microphone button.

_TeamTalk Direct Messages_

_“Ended up in Shinjuku Wiz. But for what it’s worth I’m really sorry I flaked out on you. It’s not something I do. I just had to look out for my girls. Can we reschedule for a small session later in the evening today? I gotta get up early tomorrow. Just send me some messages, and I’ll read when I wake up. You should really go to bed too though, Wiz.” - Voice Clip from Babylon sent at 7:00AM._

Ryou can hear the tired crackle in your voice, and how your tone was unusually demure, softer and almost deeper than usual. It’s definite exhaustion, as you lacked the jittery, frantic, excitable energy he was used to hearing in your tone. It’s dead, soft and quiet, like you’re about to fall into a pillow. For some reason, it makes his ears feel unusually warm, because the playful affection and easygoing nature of his party member feels inexplicably more intimate when it’s a soft-spoken voice clip sent in the small hours of the morning.

_Wizard_of_Change: It’s okay. Just msg when you’re awake. I’ll go to bed now too. Promise! :D_

You almost miss the voice clip sent back.

_“We’ll speak later, sleep well Babi-chan,” - Voice Clip from Wizard_of_Change sent at 7:05AM._

You pass out beside Hanako with an inexplicable smile on your face, stress melting away at the promise of a rescheduled session.

* * *

Waking up was a tired, blurry experience that took far longer than it usually did, but by the time you have, Hanako has long gone and has left a text and a fresh thermos of coffee from the communal kitchen space on your desk. You don’t drink it terribly often but when you do, it’s usually because you prefer it to having too much soda to stay awake, and in a mildly hungover state, it is welcomed.

You see a goodbye note scribbled hastily on your notepad and a thank you from Hanako because she wanted to quickly get back to her dorm and freshen up, but promised to make this up to you at some point - not that she had to.

It’s about 4PM by the time you actually wake up - and it’s probably not good for your overall pattern but you’ll just have to suffer through it, for now. A run will probably help - once you’ve got enough fluids in your system. Then a long, post-run shower to get all of the sweat off will be just about _perfect._

You just needed an hour or two to shake off the tiredness. Stumbling around in your oversized sleep shirt, you move to your desk and power on your gaming PC, an array of brightly coloured neon LEDs in the keyboard lighting up as you do. The coffee helps, and it’s finished down to the last drop before you’re even considering stepping out the door.

Stretching your body out, you rub your eyes and check your emails before rooting around for your wash bag while it all loaded up. Checking your phone and watch battery, you turn on some music with some wireless earbuds all synced up and crawl into a dark purple track suit with “応援団 - CSU Cheerleading Society Captain,” emblazoned in white on the back above the university’s firefly crest. You quickly begin chugging down a large bottle of water and rubbing your face - before grimacing at how it feels under your fingers.

_‘Shit. Forgot to take my makeup off last night.’_ Your eyelashes felt hard from dried, caked-up eyeliner and mascara, and your skin felt greasy, but it only made the promise of a shower after a run all the more better. You possessed a level of dedication to the habit and training that even after a wild night, you still had to keep to a sense of routine.

You splash some water on your face in the communal bathroom, brush your teeth, and dart past the idling students, charging out into the quad, warming up with a light jog once you’re out in the sun. Most of last night is behind you, and your only thoughts were on getting some air and chasing the feeling of success and the long after-run shower that was probably the best kind of relaxation you could get short of going to a day spa. Nothing could beat it.

Even a day mostly spent sleeping, you’re still busy, busy, busy.

Run. Shower. Check the rota. Schedule in another training session to adjust for the rest period after winning the intercontinental cheer championship. Do your class reading. Check if you got your grades back from your last coursework piece - thankfully your Business Management degree is mostly coursework rather than tests or you’re not sure you would be able to cope in the manner that you do. Check in on TeamTalk, check the software release date of the new operating system software for the KCWatch - that was today wasn’t it? Go through to the Spiral Staircase on Millennia if Wiz is still down for that, and then hit the campus gym to try and get tired enough to get back to your proper sleeping schedule.

Your thoughts are a busy blur of chores and the surrounding greenery of Hiratsuka city barely register in your eyes as this route has become long since familiar to you. The music you run to is the only focus until the sound of an email notification you forget to set to do not disturb breaks it up and you’re approaching a gentle slow down when you reach the end of your lap and glance at your watch.

The notification makes your pounding heart skip.

_[EMAIL:_ [ _ KLRecruit@KaibaCorp.com _ ](mailto:KLRecruit@KaibaCorp.com)

_Congratulations! You have successf…]_

You actually squeal a bit, ignoring the looks it garners you and apologise quickly, putting your hand over your mouth and running back to campus.

Somehow you resisted the urge to open it up in full on your phone, and jetted back with a speed you didn’t even expect out of yourself, lungs and legs burning from the exertion until you’re back at Kasai International House. Your entire body vibrates with excitement and it is tangible - people move out of their way for you and catch your smile as you beam at them, sweaty ponytail swinging behind you. Even the long, relaxing shower you usually languish in is sinfully quick because you just want to plant yourself behind the computer screen.

And it speaks volumes who you choose to share the moment with, not even touching your phone anymore, but instead, pulling on your headset, practically chomping at the bit and nervous tremors of excitement racing up your fingertips as your cold palm grasped the mouse.

You open up TeamTalk, glancing at who is online - and out of everybody…

Ryou Bakura is the first person you call, because you don’t actually have anybody else. Most of the girls on the team aren’t nerdy enough to share your excitement, and other than your former guildmaster, he’s the only person you can think of to share it with.

And so you do.

"Hey Wiz!" - you're practically vibrating in your chair, other than your old party members, and Doom_Tank, this was the only person who'd realise and understand how excited you were for what you suspected was in the email. Sure, people would be happy for you, but they wouldn't appreciate it in the same way the people entrenched in gaming and Duel Monsters would. There's the sound of shuffling and rustling down the headset for a moment, before the boy down the other end of the line finally let out a slightly soft, almost hesitant greeting. 

Ryou still doesn't quite have the hang of voice calls, he actually finds VR a lot less strange, because it feels more interpersonal.

_"Hey,"_ he replied, awkwardly, clearing his throat a little.

_"What's... what's going on? How are you doing?"_ he said, scratching the back of his neck a little in nervousness, and is just thankful his webcam isn't on - he's sure he doesn't look very good right now, with bags under his eyes and a shadow of tiredness set deeply into his features.

You're breathing quite heavily, though you've long caught your breathe since going for your run, it's a whole new kind of excitement. You're hovering over the email and click it, before reclining in your gamer chair to brace yourself with the text. It had taken a lot of trials, assessments, and three different interviews before you even heard back from these people. It had taken a letter of recommendation as well as the amount of hard work you put into being a team captain and your grades, alongside having done an internship program for one of your semesters with KaibaCorp's slightly less popular _Kaiba Land College Programme_ \- most people on your course were bent out of shape about getting a secure job in a reputable company or pitching for the graduate program to work directly within KaibaCorp's corporate office over in Domino City. The college programme offered by Kaiba Land was by comparison less popular, especially on your course, but was infinitely more physically demanding as well as requiring business savvy and an ability to adapt quickly. It had finally all paid off - and you were staring at a job offer.

_"Great! Better! Amazing! I just - oh my God - Wiz, I got signed! I got a job!"_ there's almost no oxygen between each word "- _at Kaiba Land!"_

This jarred Ryou out of his sleepy daze, he didn't expect - well, he didn't expect that. Just hearing 'Kaiba Land' and it being so close to home, it felt like it was pulling his online world just a little bit closer to reality, and he has to chew his tongue not to say anything, He still isn't sure he wants to talk about who is, and Battle City, or that he's even from Domino. Perhaps it is irrational, but a lot of him feels like, the more he reveals - the closer he might get to just ruining everything, and somehow tainting his new friendship with a recent past that was completely and utterly stained by the actions and presence of the Sennen Ring.

_"That's amazing! Well done,"_ he quickly rushes out, when he realises he hasn't responded. He wants to sound genuine, because it is viscerally quite nice to hear your happy tones, though it does make him feel just a little self-conscious that his only form of employment he's ever had - and currently has - is just through his dad giving him a job rather than working hard and securing one for himself. Still, he refuses to let his personal insecurities put a dampener on his new friend's happiness, what kind of person would he be, if he did that? 

_"I_ t was so hard Wiz! I went through a bunch of interviews and assessments, fitness tests - loads of stuff! Oh man, I thought I wasn't gonna get it because I'm still in university, but they said they'd work around my schedule and everything! I've got a big, important meeting thing too with the park manager and - and get this! They want to take promotional pictures with their new hires! I could have my ugly mug on a screen!" you choked, before bursting into a cackle of glee and pure euphoria - all your hard work was finally, _finally_ paying off.

"I mean, the hour commute to Domino is going to suck, but the benefits are so good! I'm gonna be in Duel Monsters heaven! I'll get a staff fuckin' DISCOUNT! I'm gonna be in the happiest place in Japan and getting paid for it!" - your excitement is palpable.

Ryou felt a strange flutter in his stomach, were you really that close? This whole time...? Well, obviously you didn't live in the city, but the idea of you being so close filled him with an odd and almost identifiable, yet strangely pleasant feeling. Like you were real, and not just a game asset, but someone he could pass in the street. When this idea might have daunted him once, it instead filled him with excitement, and the urge to burst out with the truth - that he's a local, that he's a Battle City finalist, that he'd be able guide you if he could muster up the bravery to suggest it, is just brimming under the surface. He doesn't want to jump too soon though, he knows that a lot of his excitement is probably due to how far he is from his friends from Domino High, and in truth, that anxiety about messing everything up without the Ring as an excuse why persists as he chews on his lower lip.

_"I'm gonna -- ah, oh. Um. Well. I actually don't get to tell you, there's an NDA type thing in my job offer, I'm not supposed to say what my role is to other people, until I attend an induction and get given the deets,"_ you frown, feeling yourself deflate. Now you couldn't even share the excitement fully about what it is you had even applied for.

What an absolute cockblock.

_"When is it?"_ said Ryou after a long moment of internal debate, nervously fiddling with the microphone. 

' _Don't mess this up, Ryou. There's no Spirit to blame if you do.'_ He scorned himself firmly, before clearing his throat a little again - he seemed to be feeling rather dry every time you managed to get him anxious without knowing - and did his best to sound cool and casual down the mic, despite being tense from head to toe.

_"_ This weekend, I'm gonna be in the Kaiba Land Hotel for most of it - ah shit, I guess I gotta pack huh! Carrying my luggage off the train is gonna suck though, my suitcase wheels are pretty awful and I never got around to buying a new one," you mused, blissfully unaware of Ryou's awkwardness, because frankly you couldn't detect it, not being able to see his face, or mannerisms, you had no idea he was wiping his nervously sweaty palms against his jeans and trying so hard to remain cool, using 'Push to Talk' and repeating what he's going to say to you before he's happy with his tone and his phrasing.

_"H-hey, that sounds like it'll be a lot of fun, though,"_ he said quietly, quickly checking his work rota - he's free Saturday, at least. If he needs to be. 

He practised. He stalled. He then took a sip of water and looked at his phone, and not for the first time, cursed his awkwardness with the opposite gender - and people in general.

_"Y'know - I actually... I actually live in Domino. Small world, huh? I don't... want it to be weird, because I'm a guy off the internet, but if... you need any help getting around, or..just...anything in the city. You can um, call me,"_ all that practice and he still managed to sound like an idiot.

_'Dammit,'_ he clenched the ends of his knees in frustration. _'Why am I like this?'._

"Shit, seriously?" you laugh, not at all daunted by the prospect of it, not because you weren't cautious, but in the era of hookups through swiping on your phone, you really didn't think of anything inherently strange behind Ryou's words, and Japan had always been really safe, safer than your original country, so with a bit of common sense, it was rather touching as gestures went. "That's so cool! You're in the gaming capital of Japan! I'm jealous!" - Ryou untenses and melts with a bit of relief, you hadn't immediately taken it poorly, or a 'thanks but no thanks' might have been the first thing out of your mouth. In the time he's known you, Ryou knows you're a blunt and to the point kind of no-fuss woman. You don't make yourself hard to read, and for that, he's intensely grateful. "That's so cool, I have friends all over Japan from school but I don't know anybody who lives there,".

Ryou laughed awkwardly, and smiled, wringing his fingers out a bit from his end of the monitor.

Now he just had to stick the landing.

_"You can uh, have my number. In case you don't have internet or something. Domino is pretty safe but... at least you know somebody? Kinda? Anyway, here."_

He sends the number in the text chat directly to you, and you let out a deeper, now playful sort of giggle that he comes to recognise as something a little coy, and cheeky.

"Aren't you the naughty one? Giving a girl your number but not your name. You some kinda playa?" - at this, Ryou actually chokes and is very thankful he uses push to talk features so you don't hear the ungainly noise that left his throat when you uttered those words. You obviously aren't serious, and he can tell that much, but it's so unexpected that a little high pitched laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it leaves his throat. 

He's doubly thankful you didn't hear it.

It dispels all of his doubts though, if he's ready to give his direct number, and come if you need help, it felt silly to withhold his past. 

_'I shouldn't let it have so much power over me'_

And so he doesn't.

_"My name is Ryou. Ryou Bakura."_

You utter yours - your real name, your given name, but bite down on your lip, before settling on something in your head. Yes. You like the way your name sounds in his mouth, but equally, you rather liked the monikers you used ingame, they were special, because only the two of you used them for one another.

"I like it when you use my name, and Wiz can get a little silly, but... Babi-chan is kind of cute. It almost sounds like Baby-chan and I don't know if you do it on purpose, but it feels kind of nice, because it's so different to what everyone else calls me, y'know? You're the only person I've got in my friends list who calls me something that sounds that nice without it being weird or..." _something like a certain man leaving you thirsty messages would say._ Babi-chan was _pure._ It wasn't _babe,_ or _sexy,_ or the affectionate but tiresome "Mama-san" that you often bemoaned to your teammates you sound like a brothel madam or someone who ran a hostess bar.

You were somebody's Babi-chan. And you liked it.

Ryou isn't the only one blushing behind his monitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[ A/N: lore i guess? I based Cardinal Spellman U/CSU off of a real Japanese university! (Sophia University) - if you're curious. I think it speaks volumes of who we choose to share our good news with. I also think it speaks volumes who she chose NOT to share it with. Hint. I also like the parallel between the nicknames different crowds give her.
> 
> Ryou: Babi-can
> 
> EK: Girl/babe
> 
> Her team: Mama-san
> 
> It's just....interesting o^o - sorry if this chapter is lacklustre. I've worked an 8 day work week with overtime every single day of it and this 2 day weekend really wasn't long enough - now back to the grind... more VR with the Ryou focused bits, to be honest }}

**Author's Note:**

> {{{ A/N:.... so... non-subtle references to him playing mages and being a white mage in the Monster World RPG.... and Change of Heart was his favourite card. So, that's why he's the Wiz! I know I know, no points for originality on my end... any way, next chapter aims to be longer, but this is my 'relax fic' so who knows, it's my slice of life fun. But, if you're reading it & enjoying the angle I'm gonna go for, pls leave input, it gives me the (1) serotonin I need to continue with more vigor... anyway that's it from me folks, stay safe chums! }}


End file.
